I went to Culver
and sat on the rim
of Lake Maxinkuckee
breathing poems
into the early evening air
and they didn't hang
there like castoff fruit
or the oddball moon
no, nor did they frighten
the dog who was nosing trash
as if it were a living thing
along the frozen waves of sand
nor even dart gracelessly
down into the green world
of the small fish that hover
there about the pillars
of the peer, no, they just
disappeared as if they were
never really there at all,
as if their existence were
some trick of my imagination,
as if their lives were dependent
on the chance of my mind's folly
and not the solid wood of a ship
I had sailed my life away on
“Tonight” was printed in Salem Cemetery, No. 6 of Inwood Indiana. Pick up the paperback from Prolific Press; the stories and poems published online are free to read here.
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